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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 5 March 2021.
Prof Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, said:
“The provisional ONS figures on death registrations take the picture up to the week from 27 February to 5 March. There’s a lot of good news in there, but there are still several concerning aspects. The number of deaths registered in England and Wales in that week was over a thousand less than the previous week. You would expect weekly deaths to fall a little at this time of year as we continue to move out of winter – but the decrease was considerably larger than would be expected on past experience. ONS find an excess deaths figure by comparing the number of registrations this year with the average number over the five years 2015-2019. The total number is still above the five-year average, so that there are excess deaths – but the deaths in the most recent week are only 409 above the five-year average (so less than 4% above average). The week before, there were 1,066 excess deaths on this basis, and the week before that, 2,182, so the numbers seem to be roughly halving every week. They have fallen every week since the first week in February. In Wales, deaths in the latest week were in fact below the five-year average. In England, they were still above average, but the number was within the range of death registrations in the corresponding week in those past five years. I expect that the number of deaths in England and Wales taken together with fall below the five-year average in the next week or two. Deaths in the most recent week were below the five-year averages in two of the English regions (the North East, and Yorkshire and the Humber), and very little above average in the South East and the South West, but the position was worse in some other regions, particularly in the East Midlands where death registrations were 16% above average.
“The numbers of deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate have continued to fall as well. In the most recent week there were 2,105 of them in England and Wales. That’s 28% down on the previous week, which in turn was 29% down on the week before, and the week before was 28% down on the week before that. These Covid-related deaths have now been falling since the last week in January. In that week (ending 29 January) there were 8,433 Covid-related deaths in England and Wales, so the latest week had about a quarter of that number. And there continue to be pretty clear signs of effects of vaccinations on deaths. Since that week ending 29 January, Covid-related deaths in people aged 80+ have fallen by 79%, and the number for those aged 70-79 has gone down by 75%, both considerably greater falls than for people aged under 70, which fell by 62% over those five weeks. Covid-related deaths in the over 70s fell by almost a third in just the most recent week, while deaths in those aged up to 69 fell by a much smaller amount (17%). These are the numbers for England and Wales; ONS provide data for the whole UK as well and the pattern across ages is much the same. It’s impossible to be sure that these age differences are all due to vaccination, but they must be to a very considerable extent.
“It’s still the case, though, that the virus continues to cause a large number of deaths each week. Of the 2,105 deaths in England and Wales where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, 1,685 of them (four in five) had Covid-19 coded as the underlying cause. That’s a lot of deaths – about the level of deaths with Covid-19 as the underlying cause at the end of October last year, or the end of May last year, and way above the levels last August and early September when they were around 100 for weeks. One possibly good sign, though it’s difficult to interpret just on the basis of this bulletin, is that the percentage of Covid-19 related deaths that have Covid-19 coded as the underlying cause has been falling in recent weeks – it has been running at about 90% for some time, but is 80% this week. It’s impossible to know exactly why this is from these results, but it does seem to be the case that this percentage falls as the number of Covid deaths falls. It’s still true, as it has been since October, that deaths from causes other than Covid-19 are running below average – about 1,700 below average in the latest week. That’s because lockdowns reduce other infections as well as Covid-19, and may reduce deaths from causes like transport accidents because fewer people are travelling. Also, to some extent, non-Covid deaths will be reduced compared to the average because some people, who might have died from some other cause about now, were taken by Covid at an earlier date.
“Because of all this, we can’t stop being sensibly cautious. As we emerge from lockdowns and other restrictions, the effect of those restrictions in reducing non-Covid deaths will lessen, whatever happens to Covid deaths. And while I’m sure there will be a continuing effect of vaccination in reducing Covid deaths, that may be less clear in future now that such a big proportion of the most vulnerable groups have been vaccinated. There is no effect of school reopening in England on these latest figures, because they don’t yet go as far as the reopening date, and if there was an effect on infections and eventually deaths, that wouldn’t show up for some time yet. This and other removals of restrictions are pretty certain to have some effect of increasing infection levels, or at the very least, causing them to reduce more slowly. The feed-through from that into hospitalisations and, sadly, deaths should not be anything like as severe as it would have been before vaccination – but there will be an effect, and we mustn’t forget that not everyone can be vaccinated. So please let’s not throw all caution to the winds.”
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
Declared interests
Prof Kevin McConway: “I am a Trustee of the SMC and a member of its Advisory Committee. I am also a member of the Public Data Advisory Group, which provides expert advice to the Cabinet Office on aspects of public understanding of data during the pandemic. My quote above is in my capacity as an independent professional statistician.”